Norbauer Seneca review: a $3,600 luxury keyboard for the keyboard obsessed

Some people can tell the wonderful wine of good wine. They go to taste wine, take wine tours. It tends to spend more money on wine than most.

I am not one of these people. I can say wine from vinegar if I show me the bottle. I am just a little obsessed with keyboards.

I spent the past two months in writing on SENECA, a fully dedicated keyboard starting at $ 3600 and may be the best computer keyboard ever. I have also made a group of other people – people whose position on keyboard is more utilitarian. My wife uses a mechanical keyboard because I put her on her office; If you take it away, you’ll return to the Logitech ibens keyboard worth $ 30 without any complaints. Sinika put her office. She said it’s good. I took it away. She returned to the other keyboard.

The more normal you are around the keyboards, the less impressive Cenica. I am not normal about keyboards, and SENECA is incredible.

SENECA is the first luxury keyboard from Norbauer & Co, a company that wants to be keyboards what is Leica for cameras, Porsche for cars, or Hermés are handbags and scarves.

The interesting thing about Seneca is not costly. It is easy to make something costly. It is interesting because it is the product of the search that has lasted for a decade in a keyboard to make the best keyboard possible, leading to the development of its special keys and fixtures, at an useless expense. It will be a great story even if it fails.

You can read about the Ryan Norpore trip to develop Cenica in the other article we just published. The summary version is: The Seneca is a custom keyboard, and it is a descendant of after -sales boxes that Norbauer used to make Topre panels, except here that it is not only dedicated housing. The entire keyboard is made of parts that you cannot get anywhere, inside a metal structure that is manufactured with an unnecessary accuracy, and handcrafted in Los Angeles by a small team of the famous keyboard.

It is amazingly heavy and inexpensively expensive, incredibly enjoyable, in a way that the keyboard mights may not only appreciate.

For the lack of a better word, SENECA feels permanent. Nearly seven pounds weighs and seems to be a soft concrete or a dilapidated stone stone. The box is ground aluminum, while finishing the plasma oxidation that has a warm gray look but it feels completely smooth. It is actually difficult to pick up; There is no place to curl your fingers under it. You are supposed to go to your office and stay there.

The switches of transformers and fixtures have been developed by Norbauer & Co. It is exclusive to the company’s key units, which are just SENECA today. It is the most interesting thing about the keyboard – the complete reason I wanted to test. They are tremendous.

The keys are a collection of Dome Topre design (the most famous in the happy pirate keyboard), but it is more smooth and less volatile, with a deeper voice. Unlike each Topre key, it is designed about Keycaps MX from the beginning, so the cans do not interfere with Keycaps Keycaps. (This is a greater deal than it may seem. This means that Seneca works with thousands of after -sales Keycap groups, instead of a bare bare hand that works with Topre panels).

The chilli, like the keys, took years to develop. They are frightening and excessive in engineering, confused, and they are undoubtedly the best stabilizers in the world. There is no shame or mark in any of the stable keys, and although the distance bar has deeper than the rest of the keys, it is not higher than my ears.

The writing experience is sublime. The keys contain a large bump by touching at the top, soft beating, and easy strikes. Those in my review unit are medium weight, which you are supposed to feel like 45 grams Topre; There are lighter and heavier options.

The keys are silent, not silenced; Silicon rings on the scrolling tape softening the stroke, there is a switch inhibitor and the PCB that calms down from the bottom and prevents the file crisis. (The keys are compatible with third -party rings; I tried an old silence, and I have worked well).

There are fillings between the keys and solid copper keyboard, and between the painting and housing; There are materials in everywhere. The result is deep, silent ThunderWithout Ping Hint.

“The gentle sound of SENECA often looks like rain drops. It contains a soft garlic intentionally without being loud,” says keyboard information. Read this with any voice you want. What deserves, edge CEO Jake Castinx, who did not read the information page but listen to the written writing test below, also He said he looked like rain drops.

Everything you compare, it seems that Seneca looks great.

SENECA is now available for Preormer, in the first version of about 100 to 150 units, starting at $ 3600.

The unit that I was testing is the edition of Edition Zero – the first production process – which includes 50 presented in a special sale last summer for a small group of former NorBauer customers, as well as a few tests, certificates and review.

The Edition Zero Senecas version, including my review unit, came with the fixed programs for closed sources that do not allow the re -designing devices -based keys, which, for me, is the biggest neglect. When Norbauer cost the fixed programs before half a decade, chose not to include the ability to set up for simplicity. Restarting the programs has been considered well enough for the standard design keyboard that is not intended from the computer to the computer.

I do not share this opinion. I program the same function in all my keyboards, and I am moderately annoyed every time I reach a shortcut on the SENECA that does not exist. But I have to give up that the reset of programs-I was using Karabiner-Elements on Mac and PowerTOys keyboard manager on Windows-is mainly acceptable in the short term. But reset the devices He is Important on compact keyboards, such as those that the company plans to make after that. Norbauer works with Luca Sevá, also known as Cipulot – the Guy for Three-thethruging Electrocapical PCB- on new open source fixed programs that will allow re-evaluation. These fixed programs will be available on SENECA, and perhaps by the time when the first keyboard ship is making, but it was not yet available during the test period.

There are a few other dodgers. The USB-C Senca cable uses the end of the computer and the Lemo connector in the nearby end. It looks very great, and the aesthetic coherent keeps it, but if SENECA joins the rotation of other keyboards on your office, this means that you have to switch the cables every time. On the one hand, if you are buying a 7 -pound keyboard, $ 3,600, will you really move it from your office a lot? On the other hand, if you care enough on keyboards to buy this, you may have a lot of great keyboards you want to rotate. (Norbauer works on Dongle Lemo-To-Usb-C short, but this was also not ready during the review period.)

Senica has a completely flat writing angle. Most mechanical keyboards are higher in the back from the front, with the angle of writing between 3 and 11 degrees. Comfortable, flat (or even negative) is better. There are optional copies ($ 180, made in South Africa of original solid wood) that gives it a triple writing angle, if you prefer that. On a whip, I put it back, give the keyboard a negative An angle of three degrees, and now all other keyboards feel strange. This may be the biggest effect of Seneca to go forward in my life.

During the past month or so, I asked a few friends and family members to try to write on Seneca. Most of them have office jobs, most of whom use mechanical keyboards all day long, but they are not a keyboard.

They were, as a rule, moderate. Everyone thinks it looks nice, and everyone loves the way he feels and its voices, but it is not fool. He did not destroy them for their keys. Most of them ask about the whereabouts of the numbers.

At the functional level, SENECA does nothing more than Keychron $ 115. In fact, there is no less: there is no wireless, no rear lighting, no size handle, not HotSWAP keys, (at the present time) there is no resets of fixed programs. As a writing machine, it is not angry of denial, but perhaps not in a way that no person only notices a keyboard or cares about it. This is good.

If you are selling a keyboard for $ 3,600, your audience has narrowed to two small and interfering groups. You should be able to persuade the most obsessed with the keyboard on the floor that something about your keyboard cannot reach anywhere else. You have to persuade programmers at Nouveau Riche and the desktops obsessed with the office that persuaded those obsessed with the keyboard and that this keyboard deserves half of the Rolex for beginners.

Some people who buy SENECA will definitely do it only because It is beautiful and useful, and they can bear it. This is a good reason like any. But mostly, this is a luxurious keyboard for a very specific type of student who taught a lot of keyboard. If your idea of ​​Nice is an integral heavy capacity plate, then SENECA is better than anything else you can buy or build.

You don’t have to spend $ 3,600 to get an amazing keyboard. clearly. It is very easy not to spend $ 3,600 on a keyboard. You can spend a great time with a cliff panel that costs less than $ 100. For less than 10 percent of the SENECA price, you can get the Barebones group keyboard, add any keys, fixes and keys you want, and control the end result more than you do with SENECA. (Strong support here for classic TKL and Bauer Lite). You can get a real keyboard for $ 250 and fall in love with the Topre keys that launched Norbauer on the road to SENECA for those past years.

If you are smart, you will stop there. Or, if you are like me, you will find yourself after a decade with more keyboards than computers, which are intersecting to spend $ 3600 on the most beautiful keyboard in the world.